HPC riding high in the wake of credit crunch

Economic downturn sees firms turning to supercomputers to avoid real-life errors

Starting grid: Car designers can use a PC, rather than using an expensive prototype.

The economic downturn has sparked a boom in demand for high-performance computing (HPC) among private sector firms, according to resellers working in the sector.

Julian Fielden, managing director of IBM reseller OCF, claimed the HPC market is expanding four times faster than the general server market as firms turn to supercomputers to avoid costly manufacturing errors.
“HPC is popular in Formula 1 racing, as the car designers can build a prototype on a PC instead of physically building it,” he said.

“They can put it in a virtual wind tunnel and alter the design to make it more aerodynamic ­ companies want to simulate their mistakes instead of replicating them.”

Alastair Edwards, senior analyst at research house Canalys agreed that the HPC channel is more insulated against the credit crunch than other sectors.

“HPC is a niche market and very few are skilled in this area, so there is always demand for it. It makes sense that HPC is growing in the private sector as the public sector is never really affected by economic downturns due to its funding cycles and project-led support,” he said.

OCF recently won a £250,000 contract to upgrade the University of Westminster’s previous 32-node high-performance compute cluster (HPCC) with a new 96-node HPCC. However, Fielden admitted HPC spend in the public sector was
limited by the amount of money offered by the government.

The upgrade has increased the university’s contribution to the UK grid computing facility, the National Grid Service (NGS).

Researchers use the grid to share information on a range of medical disciplines. For example, they can use the grid to understand how cancer or HIV molecules interact with each other under certain stimuli.